Documentary
Demi Lovato Shares Hard Truths In Dancing With the Devil: SXSW Review
Editor’s Note: The following review is as part of our coverage of the 2021 South by Southwest Film Festival. Stay tuned for further reviews straight outta Austin — well, virtually, of course. Below, Jenn Adams kicks things off with Demi Lovato’s tragic new documentary. The Pitch: In 2018, singer/songwriter Demi Lovato suffered a near-fatal overdose on drugs and alcohol. She survived, but just barely. This followed six years of very public sobriety in which she was often held up as a poster child for addiction and recovery, a dangerous variation of her childhood spent as the literal poster child for Disney perfection. Directed by Michael D. Ratner, Dancing With the Devil is an honest and unflinching account of her relapse, overdose, and recovery and an open discussion of the sexual assault,...
Tom Petty Breezes Through His Wildflowers Era in Somewhere You Feel Free: SXSW Review
Editor’s Note: The following review is as part of our coverage of the 2021 South by Southwest Film Festival. Stay tuned for further reviews straight outta Austin — well, virtually, of course. Below, Clint Worthington reviews Mary Wharton’s Tom Petty documentary. The Pitch: While Tom Petty’s work with The Heartbreakers gave us some of the most iconic country-rock tunes of the past half-century, Petty purists likely cite his second solo album, 1994’s Wildflowers, as his arguable creative apex. But for all the relaxed charms of songs like “You Wreck Me” and “Only a Broken Heart”, the album was made at a particularly tumultuous time for the artist, including creative struggles with MCA, clashes with Heartbreakers drummer Stan Lynch, and the end of his first marriage. While Petty...
Poly Styrene: I Am a Cliché Is Hardly Cliché: SXSW Review
Editor’s Note: The following review is as part of our coverage of the 2021 South by Southwest Film Festival. Stay tuned for further reviews straight outta Austin — well, virtually, of course. Below, Rachel Reeves checks out the new rock doc on Poly Styrene. The Pitch: Marianne Elliott-Said, aka Poly Styrene, is a punk rock icon. She was the first woman of color to front a successful UK punk band. She defied stereotypes and inspired countless women to do the same. She was also a highly flawed individual who struggled with mental health issues, a misogynistic industry, her personal identity and relationships. She was all of these things and so much more. Now, years after her passing, Styrene’s daughter Celeste Bell and co-director Paul Sng have released an incredibly personal tribute to...
Kid 90 Is A Personal Portrait of ’90s Teen Celebrity: Review
The Pitch: Comprised almost entirely of home video tapes, audio recordings, and journal entries — interspersed with interviews conducted in the present day — ’90s child star Soleil Moon Frye reflects on her star-studded upbringing in Hollywood and grapples with the nature of growing up in front of the camera as she unearths firsthand accounts of stardom from her youth. Teen Idol: At the risk of speaking too soon, 2021 seems like the year of documentaries about young women growing up in the spotlight. There was Framing Britney Spears, Billie Eilish’s The World’s a Little Blurry, and now kid 90. Though they have the same subject matter, they each tackle coming-of-age for young women in the limelight through three drastically different points of view. Kid 90, crucially, is directed by Frye he...
Stephen A. Smith Is Working On A HBCU ‘Black Excellence’ Docuseries
HipHopWired Featured Video Source: Diamond Images / Getty ESPN’s most spirited voice is about to take his talents to the big screen. Stephen A. Smith is working on a project to highlight some of our finest educational institutes. As spotted on Deadline Stephen A. Smith’s new production venture Mr. SAS Productions, which currently produces Stephen A’s World and co-produces Why Not Us? for ESPN+, has struck a deal for its next big project — a documentary series celebrating and highlighting the importance of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) in American Society. The series will be produced in partnership with Propagate, the production company behind Hulu’s Hillary, and Confluential Films, the production company behind Black Love on OWN. Black Excellence will uncover th...
Stream Now: Documentary Exploring Gender Inequity in EDM Hits Streaming Platforms
To coincide with International Women’s Day, Underplayed, a documentary exploring gender inequity in EDM, has officially hit streaming platforms. Starting today, March 8th, you can watch Underplayed on Amazon Prime, YouTube, Apple TV, and Google Play, among other major streaming services. The film provides timely commentary on the blatant gender gap present in electronic music via interviews with many of the scene’s most prevalent artists, such as TOKiMONSTA and REZZ. “I feel like I’ve really had to prove myself more so than men, and I think a lot of women will tell you the same thing,” famed DJ and music producer Alison Wonderland told EDM.com in an October 2020 interview. “I had to work really hard for credibility as an artist.” The 20...
Billie Eilish: The World’s a Little Blurry Offers a Clear Portrait of Teenage Life: Review
The Pitch: When Billie Eilish was 13 years old, she posted a video of herself singing her song “Ocean Eyes”. Three years later, in 2018, she was already on a fast path to superstardom, and director R.J. Cutler somehow knew to pick up his camera. This is the starting point to his Apple TV+ documentary, Billie Eilish: The World’s a Little Blurry. Cutler, whose resume includes documentaries such as The September Issue and Belushi, couldn’t have predicted the kind of year he was about to capture. By circling around Eilish’s 18th year, Cutler documented the writing, recording, release, and reaction of her first full-length album, When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?. He then continued to capture Eilish’s subsequent sold-out shows and festival appearances, radio and magazine interviews, and ...
Snitch 101: Director Details Making Of ‘Supervillain: The Making Of Tekashi 6ix9ine’
Source: @JustInMyView / R1 Digital Snitches are said to get stiches but Hip-Hop’s biggest stool pigeon got a cable television film made about him. But the man behind it insists it doesn’t celebrate the rainbow haired troll. As spotted on Deadline, Supervillain: The Making Of Tekashi 6ix9ine has finally premiered and the public is now getting a better idea of how the Brooklyn native became Rap’s most notorious figure. The unauthorized three-part docuseries explores the roots of the first-generation Mexican and Puerto Rican kid from Bushwick, Brooklyn named Daniel Hernandez. In an exclusive interview director Karam Gill discusses how the project came to be. “Initially, I didn’t want to do the project… he’s not a person at first that I wanted to do a project on, but as I started to ...
Snitch 101: Director Details Making Of ‘Supervillain: The Making Of Tekashi 6ix9ine’
Source: @JustInMyView / R1 Digital Snitches are said to get stiches but Hip-Hop’s biggest stool pigeon got a cable television film made about him. But the man behind it insists it doesn’t celebrate the rainbow haired troll. As spotted on Deadline, Supervillain: The Making Of Tekashi 6ix9ine has finally premiered and the public is now getting a better idea of how the Brooklyn native became Rap’s most notorious figure. The unauthorized three-part docuseries explores the roots of the first-generation Mexican and Puerto Rican kid from Bushwick, Brooklyn named Daniel Hernandez. In an exclusive interview director Karam Gill discusses how the project came to be. “Initially, I didn’t want to do the project… he’s not a person at first that I wanted to do a project on, but as I started to ...
Serj Tankian on His Film Truth to Power, the Chaos Around Toxicity, and the Time He Feared for His Life
Serj Tankian’s life as an activist and musician is captured in the new documentary, Truth to Power. The just-released film offers a fascinating look at the singer’s journey inside and outside of his multiplatinum rock band System of a Down. Following Tankian’s path from his childhood to to his pre-SOAD band Forever Young to the present day, Truth to Power features testimonials by Serj and his bandmates, along with such associates as producer Rick Rubin and Rage Against the Machine’s Tom Morello. The film also uses archival video to tell Tankian’s story of activism, while also touching on the origins and highlights of System of a Down’s career. Interspersed are newly shot scenes that include the singer visiting his old high school in Hollywood and voyaging to Armenia during a revolutio...
New Tom Petty Documentary To Premiere at SXSW 2021 Film Festival
With Sundance now behind us, South by Southwest has gone ahead and announced its feature film lineup for 2021. Set to take place virtually from March 16th to 20th, the Austin-based festival will screen nearly a hundred new features. Not surprisingly, the major highlights of the lineup are of the musical variety, specifically documentaries Tom Petty, Somewhere You Feel Free, Demi Lovato: Dancing with the Devil, and the Charli XCX-focused Alone Together. “It’s been a year unlike any we’ve experienced, first marked by the cancellation of SXSW 2020,” said Janet Pierson, Director of Film. “We feel privileged to have been able to pivot to SXSW Online and present a fantastic treasure trove of programming, including a pared down and wonderful selection of films that we know will delight, ente...
Documentary on Four Seasons Total Landscaping in the Works
Four Seasons Total Landscaping is still cashing in on its increased exposure thanks to the bumbling, blundering 2020 Trump campaign. Since the humble Philadelphia business became the accidental site of a Rudy Giuliani press conference back in November, the company has raked it in with exclusive merch and that cheeky “Opportunity Knocks” Super Bowl ad for Fiverr. Now, the debacle that started this whole thing will become the focus of a new documentary from a pair of Oscar-winning producers. Entitled Four Seasons Total Documentary, the in-production film is being directed by Christopher Stoudt (Patron Saint of Jazz Fest). Glen Zipper and Sean Stuart, who won Academy Awards in 2012 for their high school football doc Undefeated, are serving as producers (via The Hollywood Reporter). Four Seaso...
